I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Should Hand-Washing Be Required at Eateries?

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosureBy Mavis Butterfield on February 6, 2015 · 25 Comments

While perusing NPR the other day, I found an article about a Senator from North Carolina who feels that our country has gone overboard with regulations. He cited the hand-washing requirement for restaurant employees as being a prime example of the over-regulation by the government. He felt that if restaurants posted a sign that stated that they don’t require hand-washing, the market would naturally sort itself out {meaning, people bothered by the no hand-washing would stop frequenting the establishment and the lost business would be its own incentive. {I couldn’t help but wonder, though, if we require establishments to post a sign saying they DON’T require hand-washing, aren’t we kind of regulating something in a different way?}

In fairness, the Senator’s point was not that he loves dirty hands, but that businesses should regulate themselves. Still, hand-washing is a perfect example of one of those regulations peeps might really appreciate–but maybe not? Maybe I’m the odd-ball?

Either way, I wondered what YOU all thought? I personally think hand-washing before preparing food is kind of cool.

Comments

Man, some people seem to think EVERY regulation is an over regulation. Please wash your hands before you make the food that I am going to be over paying for. And if hand washing weren’t required, more germs would spread, more people would get sick, health care costs would go up, etc, etc. It’s a pretty simple regulation, I’m sure 99.999999% of people don’t have a problem with it.
Just don’t make it a regulation in my home, I’m a spoon licker…… (unless we have guests.)

I have a food handlers permit for my state. Hand washing is mandatory after using the bathroom. I would like it to be mandatory before touching food, which it is unless a person uses gloves. But, you put those gloves on with hands that may have who knows what on them (!) and that transfers to the gloves.

Food safety is too important to let employers decide for themselves. Let them poll their customers. I can’t imagine anyone saying they would eat food prepared by someone who just used the restroom! I don’t cook food in my own home without washing first, and that is the first step in cooking I taught my children.

I’ve only read headlines about this, but I find it very strange that hand washing is the senator’s chosen battle ground for over regulation. It’s a public health issue. Can you imagine if hospitals made hand washing optional? I was at the emergency department recently and there were signs about cough covering and offers for facial masks and pumps of hand sanitizer on every counter and table in sight. And I appreciate it all.

I’m all in favor of eliminating over-regulation, wherever it may be. However, something that requires businesses and their employees to adhere to a practice that has been proven to protect public health is not in the category of “over-regulation.” The Senator from North Carolina is off the mark by a wide margin on this.

HOnestly it makes my head hurt that he would even suggest such a thing. Unfortunately it seems like this is just another example of lawmakers lacking a basic grasp of science. Hand washing is basic, BASIC disease control. I’m sure there are a lot of regulations in place for eateries and they exist to keep people from getting sick! You want to talk about regulations, take a look at the building codes for houses. There are THOUSANDS! But they were created to keep your house from, like, killing you.

I have been in the restaurant business for over 40 years in the same location. Hand washing IS very important as well as using gloves when handeling foods. I have over 80 employee guidlines myself apart from a few that are mandated by fed and state. Several employees helped me with these guidelines over the years. Are we regulated too mush in America, absolutly. Do we need guidelines to protect ourselves and our customers, absolutly. I once watched a fast food employee open a package of decaf coffee with her teeth. Yes, I canceled my order………Btw, Im in North Carolina……….

Preface, I am Canadian,…
My “outsiders perspective” of the the de-regulation nut-jobs in the USA… is that they are crazy and a danger to society. I am assuming this guy is republican. Most Canadians I speak politics with, believe the extreme right-wingers got their heads you-know-where. Quite frankly it appears to outsiders that they want to deregulate everything, so they can do what ever they want, to make as much money as they want… at any cost, without consideration for the general public. Please senator go find a fight worth fighting, this is a matter of public safety and good sense.

The idea that all regulation is bad is both oversimplification and idiocy. Of course, it makes sense to require restaurant workers wash their hands before preparing food. I used to live in the Bay Area not far from several EPA Superfund Sights. Sorry, but I wanted those sights monitored and eventually cleaned up. Sometimes regulations can allow us to live safer, and that’s not a bad thing. Maybe the senator should try to find a better example to make his point. He sure didn’t pick a good one in my opinion.

Oh. Good. Grief. As if signing some law ensures that people actually do wash their hands! There are laws limiting speed limits on the roads, but how often are those obeyed in the absence of a radar-gun wielding officer? Laws against murder don’t seem to have any effect on the actual number of murders committed. There are too many laws on the books as it is.

I assume you have some statistical proof of your claim that laws against murder don’t have any effect on the actual number of murders committed…akin to the folks who said civil rights laws would have no effect on attitudes or behavior. Yet, strangely, they have.

If murder were not against the law, and pretty much a guarantee of spending time in jail, I certainly would be more inclined to send certain people home to Jesus before they wanted to go.

I could never figure out why the signs for employees are in the bathroom. So….they wash their hands and then 90% of them head straight to the door and put their hand(s) on the door plate/pull that hundreds of other hands have touched (not all of them clean and sanitized following their use of the bathroom). So now the freshly washed hands are no longer freshly washed. I’m a confirmed hand washer. But I also think the people should use an ounce of common sense. Guess I should also mention that I eat out about once every 3 years or so. Guess this isn’t something I feel too strongly about for that reason.

I used to work at a Taco Bell/KFC, and of course I always washed my hands this way, since I’m clean like that 😉 and it was a rule. But the double handwashing thing is why I don’t understand that the signs for employees are in the bathrooms, especially in cases where staff has a separate bathroom.

Handwashing is expected, so why do we need to post a sign one way or another where employees are concerned? I personally see regular customers not washing much more often than I see employees not washing…

Maybe we should post more signs encouraging everyone to be hygienic. “Don’t be gross – please wash your hands!”

So this makes me think of two radio programs I have heard that touch on the topic of regulation. The first one explores how over-regulation can be a cause of poverty and the second one, in one of the segments(at the 44minute mark), talks about a woman who has some battles with mental illness, but is encouraged to open her own business selling coffee. Just buy the cups stay open until you run out of cups, close and buy more cups. They both make me think that there is something to be said for keeping it extremely simple to open and maintain a small business. I don’t think the little mandated signs telling employees to wash hands makes employees do so. I do think the health dept, when they inspect, should make sure there is soap and water.http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2015/01/28/381652827/episode-599-the-invisible-wallhttp://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/520/no-place-like-home

I contracted Hepatitis A that was linked to a restaurant worker who was infected, and apparently not overly concerned about washing their hands. I wanted to die. This Senator’s proposal shows a lack of concern for public health and a lack of common sense. Regulations are to protect us too.

I went to a casual restaurant with my family about 9 years ago. My little boy was potty training and needed to use the bathroom (single toilet each for male and female. I went in the female bathroom). It was the filthiest bathroom I have ever been in – and it was the bathroom the employees used. It was so bad. I can still see it in my mind. I have not been back and I probably will never go back.

I worked in a grocery store years ago. I watched the lady that wrapped the meat use the bathroom and leave without washing her hands. She was also a smoker. I never bought meat there the two years I worked there.

The context in which I saw this was in response to the vaccine/anti-vaccine debate that is going on right now as a result of the measles outbreak. For example, if we allow people to refuse the vaccine and then they get sick, whose fault is it? Are the unvaccinated (sick) people liable for getting the rest of the population sick? Can they be sued? OR Should we just force everyone to get vaccinated, so they won’t get sick? So, if we don’t force restaurant workers to wash their hands to prevent illness – is that the same/similar as allowing people to not vaccinate?

Haha I thought it was a discussion over requiring customers to wash their hands before eating! That is a good idea too but might be hard to enforce. Encouraging/requiring employees to wash their hands YES. Hand washing is the single most effective way to avoid spreading germs!

Just a thought: Do we really believe that, just because there’s a sign dictating something, that it’s actually going to happen? I’ve seen employees come out of the stall, stop at the mirror, fix their hair and leave. I’ve not yet been convinced that a sign solves the issue.